Mp3 of the Week: White Hinterland

Back when she was studying at New England Conservatory, Casey Dienel put out a demo called "Grandmother Rock," a quick suite of songs suggesting rocking chairs more than rock-n-roll, a genre you'd coin if you were precocious, shy, and out of love with your generation. Dienel's debut, The Wind-Up Canary, was all of these things; her new album, and new incarnation, even more so. On Phylactery Factory, the debut from White Hinterland (a band, evidently, although she's still solo in her press photos), Dienel's songs find their gravity in wistfully-scrawled characters and jazzy, autumnal piano chords (Vince Guaraldi has been mentioned). Her voice is drowsy, her meter brisk; settled back in JP after a Brooklyn soujourn, she seems to be drinking from a deeper brew, her tiptoeing phrases easily startled into hiccups of surprise. And her melodies, always evasive, are rubbed round and smooth, as if she'd been singing them for decades. White Hinterland make their local debut this Saturday, February 2, at PA's Lounge.